Castor, Enclave 1, 50 Resolution Way, London SE8 4AL

Interview with Grace Woodcock

If you’ve managed to envisage telepathy and sleeplessness, then you’re some way to grasping the substance of my recent conversation with Grace Woodcock. We discussed her retro futuristic solo exhibition at Castor gallery in London, through the lens of Octavia Butler’s equally fascinating and terrifying sci-fi novel ‘Mind of My Mind’ (1977). The book tracks a young, poor and mixed race woman called Mary who goes through a dramatic transition from “latent” to “active”. She supplants her trans-racial, trans-gender breeder Doro by creating a super-race of telepaths, all connected through a universal pattern. Interview by Jillian Knipe

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Nida Art Colony, E. A. Jonušo g. 3, 93127, Lithuania

Liu Chuang: Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities

Some Baltic mythology to start. Neringa is a young giant from Lithuanian folklore, pure of heart and altruistic. One day Neringa was playing on the Baltic Sea coast when a storm hit, and the giantess piled up sand to protect the land—an area now known as the Curonian Spit. This sand-dune spit is divided in half between Lithuania and Russia, by way of Kaliningrad. At one of the widest points sits the Lithuanian town of Nida and, while the entire strip of land has a notable and twisting history, it’s Nida that stands out as one of the most interesting locales. Review by Tom Mouna

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Soft Opening, 6 Minerva St, London E2 9EH

Olivia Erlanger: Home is a Body

At Soft Opening, contained within five large polystyrene and plexiglass eyes — their slightly warped corneas protruding from the walls — Erlanger presents a collection of domestic rooms, modelled precisely in miniature: a bedroom, garage/gym, living room, bathroom and garden. The white picket fences and floral bedspreads evoke an image of suburban life that those of us who grew up outside of America will recognise largely through its ubiquity in the fictional worlds of Hollywood films. Review by Amy Jones

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Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden St, Nottingham NG1 4GG

Sophie Cundale: The Near Room

Sophie Cundale’s new film commission ‘The Near Room’ (2020) is an absurd psychological melodrama about loss and the aftermath. The film as a whole asks, but doesn’t answer the question of how we make sense of experiences in flux, like ecstasy or crisis. In unfathomable times, when death feels closer to life than ever, this film is an unsettling watch. Review by Andrew Price

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The Cob Gallery, 205 Royal College St, London NW1 0SG

Cat Roissetter: English Filth

There’s an orgy of misdemeanours taking place—breasts are being grabbed and bottoms are being fondled, lecherous eyes are smirking and clownish faces are locking lips. It’s hard to tell where one mound of flesh ends and the next begins. Cat Roissetter’s exhibition ‘English Filth’ at The Cob Gallery is populated by some disreputable characters who look suspiciously like the lively heroes of fairy-tales and bedtime stories—gone feral. Review by Claire Phillips

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Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona, Florida

From all Points of the Southern Sky: Photography from Australia and Oceania

Together, the thirteen artists in ‘From all Points of the Southern Sky’ reckon with Australia’s colonial past. Curated by Ashley Lumb, this striking exhibition, which borrows its title from the Uluru Statement, offers an unsentimental portrait of a nation in turmoil. Review by Emily Bull

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Online and across Brighton

Photoworks: Propositions for Alternative Narratives

The longest running photography festival in England, the Brighton Photo Biennial, has reincarnated itself in the form of the Photoworks Festival. The inaugural edition is made up of three parts: an outdoor festival on the streets of Sussex, an online festival hub, and at home, a ‘Festival in a Box’. Review by Gulnaz Can

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Cooke Latham Gallery, 41 Parkgate Rd, Battersea, London SW11 4NP

Interview with Johnny Izatt-Lowry

“Each subject moves further away from reality as it becomes an image found, manipulated, photoshopped, drawn etc. This world between the familiar and the unfamiliar is where I want my work to exist.” I asked Izatt-Lowry about the inspirations behind his uncanny, dreamlike painterly worlds and his most recent Cooke Latham exhibition: ‘BY DAY, BUT THEN AGAIN BY NIGHT’. Interview by Sonja Teszler

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Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, St James's, New Cross, London SE14 6AD

Sophie Barber: The Greatest Song a Songbird Ever Sung

Sophie Barber’s canvases drape tentatively across the floor at Goldsmith’s Centre for Contemporary Art. Repurposed from old paintings and materials within her studio in Hastings, Barber’s works suggest child-like fortresses or half-completed patchwork quilts, laid bare for inspection. With its excitable superlatives and hyperbole, ‘The Greatest Song a Songbird Ever Sung’ invites its viewer to group these works together as a foray into the faux-naif style. Review by Olivia Fletcher

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The Assembly Room, 82 Borough Road, London, SE1 1DN, United Kingdom

Elizabeth Price: SLOW DANS

Elizabeth Price’s cycle of three multi-channel video works comes to London’s Assembly Room after showings at the Walker Art Centre, Nottingham Contemporary and the Whitworth, University of Manchester. Review by Kirsty White

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Emalin, Unit 4 Huntingdon Estate, Bethnal Green Rd, London E1 6JU

Sung Tieu: What is your |x|?

Are you aware of yourself moving around the room? The ubiquitous etiquette on entering a gallery – an awkward hello, the tentative shuffling behind a stranger's footsteps and the finickity orbiting of an artwork – makes us makeshift performers in any exhibition. In Sung Tieu’s installation ‘What is your (x)?’ the effect is exaggerated. Where we go and how we think are deliberately choreographed in a captivating mise-en-scène of mirrored plaques and stainless steel doors. You’re encouraged to hold on to your inhibitions in here, listening closely to the cogs turning in your brain, as if waiting for your cue to go on stage. Review by Ted Targett

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Arusha Art Gallery, 13A Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6QG

Ancient Deities

In September, Arusha Gallery reopened its doors to a world transformed. ‘Ancient Deities’ fittingly extends the viewer an invitation to consider our future by returning our attentions to the myths of days gone by. Co-curated by artist Rhiannon Salisbury, the show depicts a pantheon for the contemporary. 18 artists were invited to respond to a god of the past, reinventing them for a modern audience. Review by Hailey Maxwell

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Modern Art, 7 Bury Street, St. James's, London SW1Y 6AL

Martha Jungwirth

Martha Jungwirth is an artist you feel you may have seen before. A sense of déjà vu pervades her exuberant works, slashed and smeared in paint. With all the ferocity of a Willem de Kooning and the poetic subtlety of a Joan Mitchell, Jungwirth’s paintings sit comfortably amongst her Abstract Expressionist forebears, even while they mutter disobediently. Review by Claire Phillips

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Maxim Dondyuk: Untitled Project: Chernobyl

“This project is like an archaeological dig” writes Maxim Dondyuk of ‘Untitled Project: Chernobyl’, a vast treasure trove of an online exhibition. It combines found imagery storytelling the socio-political history of Ukraine, with the artist’s own works of hastily deserted landscapes and snowy, overgrown terrains, giving the viewer hundreds of images, click throughs, moving image pieces and news clippings to explore. Review by Nicola Jeffs

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